Gerald Brenan Quotes

United Kingdom, Writer
April 7, 1894 – January, 19, 1987.

Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE, MC was a British writer and hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain. Brenan is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a historical work on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village. He was appointed CBE in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List of 1982.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Gerald Brenan
- Avoid
- Oneself
- Bore
It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan
- Write
- Writer
- Amateurs

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

Gerald Brenan
- Fear
- Qualities
- Naive
Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

Gerald Brenan
- Talent
- Middle Age
- Snuff
Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

Gerald Brenan
Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money.

Gerald Brenan
- Important
- Money
- Love
Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

Gerald Brenan
- Old Age
- Earned
- Inherited
When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

Gerald Brenan
- Written
- Page
- Reads

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

Gerald Brenan
- Mother
- Memory
- Invention
We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

Gerald Brenan
Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst.

Gerald Brenan
In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

Gerald Brenan